Finalists Revealed For The 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize

The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize has announced this year's finalists for the prestigious international playwriting award, now in its 47th year and the largest and oldest award recognizing women+ writers for plays of outstanding quality written for the English-speaking theatre.  

Finalists:

Chris Bush (UK-) Otherland

Carys Coburn (Ireland) BÁN

Keiko Green (US) You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World

Haruna Lee (Taiwan-Japan-US) 49 Days

Isobel Mcarthur (UK-Scotland) The Fair Maid of the West

Suzie Miller (Australia-UK) Inter Alia

a.k. payne (US) Furlough's Paradise

Else Went (US) An Oxford Man

Anna Ziegler (US) The Janeiad

The 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize will announce the Winner at a celebration attended by writers, theatre artists, artistic leaders and supporters in New York City at Playwrights Horizons on March 10. The Winner will be awarded $25,000 and will also receive a signed and numbered print by renowned artist Willem De Kooning, created especially for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. A Special Commendation of $10,000 may be given at the discretion of the judges, and each Finalist will receive $5,000.

“We are thrilled to present the Prize at Playwrights Horizons, a theatre with a deep history and commitment to developing and producing brilliant new plays by women and non-binary writers,” remarked Prize Executive Director, Leslie Swackhamer.  2023 Winner Sarah Mantell's In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot premiered there last Fall. This year's exciting cohort of playwrights hails from all over the English-speaking world, and represents a vigorous diversity of voices, genre and subject matter.  We can't wait to celebrate and honor their work.”

Founded in 1978, the Prize is awarded annually to celebrate women+ who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre.  Each year, over 400 theatres from North America, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand and the UK serve as Source Theatres for the Prize. Over 500 plays have been honored as Finalists of the Prize and many have gone on to receive other top honors, including Olivier, Lilly, Evening Standard and Tony Awards for Best Play. Eleven Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist playwrights have subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The Prize results in more productions of plays by women+ writers and fosters the interchange of plays between the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and other English-speaking countries.

Past Winners of the Prize include Annie Baker, Alice Birch, Benedict Lombe, Julia Cho, Caryl Churchill, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Katori Hall, Lucy Kirkwood, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Dael Orlandersmith, Lucy Prebble, Sarah Ruhl, Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Timberlake Wertenbaker and Cheryl West.  Last year's Winner, 1536 by Ava Pickett, will premiere in London this May directed by Lindsey Turner at the Almeida Theatre.

Judges for the 2025 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize are: Linda Cho (US) – Tony Award-winning Costume Designer; Jennifer Ehle(US) – Tony and BAFTA Award-winning actress; NANCY MEDINA (UK) – Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic; Mark Ravenhill (UK) – Acclaimed playwright; George Strus (US) – Founder, Breaking the Binary Theatre; and Indira Varma (UK) – Olivier Award-winning actress.

ABOUT THE FINALIST PLAYS

49 Days by Haruna Lee, submitted by Playwrights Horizons (NYC)

Wildly theatrical and haunting, 49 Days follows the Nishiyama family experiencing the stages of grief across generations.  The 49th day meal after death signifies reincarnation in Buddhist ritual. This highly immersive and personal work moves fluidly through time and deftly employs music, multilingualism and magical elements to explore universal themes of love, identity, and trauma. The play has received readings at New Dramatists and Ma-Yi Theater Company, and a workshop at Playwrights Horizons, all directed by Aya Ogawa. https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/49-days/

An Oxford Man by Else Went submitted by South Coast Repertory (Costa Mesa)

In this buoyant and witty play, Else Went takes us on the embellished (mostly true) life journey of Laurence Michael Dillon, the first “modern” transgender man. He was of a world undefined, by the world undefined—and ushered in a new age of understanding, through science.  In this masterful, slightly sideways view of history Went makes us see themes of gender and identity in a fresh and surprising way. MTC's 2023 Ted Snowdon Reading Series presented a reading of the play.  Southcoast Rep's 2024 Pacific Playwrights Festival also featured a reading of An Oxford Man. 

https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/an-oxford-man/

BÁN by Carys Coburn, submitted by The Abbey Theatre (Dublin)

Set in 1980's Ireland and loosely inspired by Lorca's House of Bernarda Alba, Bán isabout sisters, lies, washing machines, love, and how much we're asked to give up in the name of family – up to and including family itself. Taking place in the family home of a controlling Bernie and her five daughters, secrets from the past can't remain hidden forever.  The girls' passion and lust for life result in Bernie's grip weakening and the lies unravelling. As the girls search for the truth and freedom, this rich stew of a family drama roils with questions of heritage, motherhood, ethnicity and gender.

https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/ban/

Furlough's Paradise by a.k. payne, submitted by the Alliance Theatre (Atlanta)

In this heart-wrenching yet tender play, a.k. payne unpacks the intimacies of the relationship between 2 cousins, Sade and Mina, raised like sisters but now living wildly different lives. While Sade is on a three-day furlough from prison and Mina takes a brief reprieve from her successful life on the West Coast,  they try to make sense of grief, home, love and kinship. Traumas and resentments from the past, both real and surreal, threaten to pull the cousins apart, all as time ticks towards the correctional officer's arrival. Furlough's Paradise premiered at the Alliance Theatre in 2024 and will receive its West Coast Premiere in April at The Geffen Playhouse.

https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/furloughs-paradise/

Inter Alia by Suzie Miller, submitted by The National Theatre (London)

From the author of the Olivier-winning Prima Facie, comes this taut drama about an eminent London Judge juggling a high-profile career with modern life and her various roles as mother, wife/partner, friend and feminist.  When her son is accused of rape, her world is turned upside down and she is forced to live out her worst nightmare, questioning how far she will go to protect her son and how well she ever really knew him. Rage, guilt, tenderness and despair vie for space in her fight to survive. Inter Alia will premiere at The National Theatre this July starring Rosamund Pike.

https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/inter-alia/

Otherland by Chris Bush submitted by the Almeida Theatre (London)

From the book-writer of the Olivier- winning Standing at the Sky's Edge, comes this strikingly resonant play about the necessity, beauty and terror of change. The play follows the delicate uncoupling of Jo and Harry, as new worlds start to open up for them both– worlds filled with new partners, new identities, andvnew possibilities. Otherland is a universal, lyrical, deeply funny and at times utterly surreal exploration of the joys, fears and challenges of what it means to be a woman finding oneself.  Otherland is currently in rehearsals for its premiere production at the Almeida Theatre, London – playing February 12 – March 15. https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/otherland/

The Fair Maid of the West by Isobel Mcarthur, submitted by the Royal Shakespeare Company (Stratford-Upon-Avon)

A bold, bombastic and skillful comedy filled with music and swash-buckling adventure, Fair Maid radically recenters and modernizes Thomas Heywood's Elizabethan romp.  McArthur illuminates the original text for the modern day but also to revels in the joy and challenges of retaining the original's pentameter. About the life-saving powers of community, compromise and compassion, Fair Maid of the West premiered to rapturous reviews in a production directed by the playwright at The Swan Theatre for The Royal Shakespeare Company in November 2024. https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/fair-maid-of-the-west/

The Janeiad by Anna Ziegler, submitted by The Alley Theatre (Houston)

In The Odyssey, Penelope's long wait is eventually rewarded when Odysseus returns twenty years after leaving to fight the Trojan War. Will the same be true for Jane in Brooklyn, twenty years after her husband left for work one fateful September morning? A play about longing and hope as well as the myths we tell ourselves in order to get through the day, The Janeiad is a wry contemplation of the power, and slipperiness, of storytelling. The Janeiad was workshopped at the Cape Cod Theatre Project and The Ojai Playwrights Conference. It was produced in the fall of 2024 at The Alley Theatre in a co-world premiere with The Old Globe Theatre, whose production is upcoming.

https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/the-janeaid/

You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World by Keiko Green submitted by UC San Diego MFA Playwriting Program (San Diego)

In this genre-defying comedy about family, death, grief, and ultimately life, Keiko Green casts a spell of deep theatrical magic.  Dream sequences, revolving around a terminal diagnosis, the search for meaning amidst chaos, and extinct animals floating in the cosmos create a rich and celebratory spectacle as magical and strange as the world itself.  Commissioned by ACT Theatre, the play has received workshops at South Coast Repertory Theatre's Pacific Playwrights Festival, Amphibian Stage's Spark Fest, the O'Neill National Playwrights Center's National Playwrights Conference, Boston Court Theatre's New Play Reading Festival, Ashland New Plays Festival and Second Stage's Judith Champion New Voices Reading Series.  It will premiere this April at South Coast Repertory Theatre.
https://www.blackburnprize.org/year/2025_/you-are-cordially-invited-to-the-end-of-the-world/